From that hour I set myself steadily to be an author. I wrote poetry by the mile, prose by the acre, and I sent it to every kind of periodical that I could find in the 'Post Office Directory.'
I had to pass through years of rejection, but still I wrote on, and still I spent all my pocket-money on books, and postage-stamps, and paper.
And at last the chance came. I was allowed to write paragraphs in the Weekly Dispatch by a friend who was a real journalist, and had a column at his disposal to fill with gossip.
After doing the work for a month for nothing, I had the whole column given to me, and one day I received my first guinea earned by scribbling.
I was a proud man when I went out of the Dispatch office that day with a sovereign and a shilling in my hand. I had forced the gates of the citadel at last. I had marched in with the honours of war, and I was marching out with the price of victory in my hand.
Soon afterwards there came another chance. The editor of the Dispatch wanted a series of short complete stories. I asked to be allowed to try if I could do them. Under the title of 'The Social Kaleidoscope,' I wrote a series of short stories or sketches, and from that day no week has passed that I have not contributed something to the columns of a weekly journal.
When the sketches were complete, the publisher of the Dispatch offered to bring them out in book form for me and publish them in the office.
'The Social Kaleidoscope' was my first book, and that is how it came into the world.
Years afterwards, my chance came with the dear old fellow who had said that it was a pity I scribbled so. Fortune had smiled upon me in one way then, and I was earning an excellent income with my pen. But my health had broken down, and it was thought necessary that I should place myself in the hands of a celebrated surgeon. I had not seen my old doctor for some years, but my people wished that he should be consulted, because he had known me so well in the days of my youth.